However, until there is silence of the mind, it is almost impossible to understand eternal life, that is to say, eternal now. - Alan Watts

In the Gestalt theory of perception this is known as the figure/ground
relationship. This theory asserts, in brief, that no figure is ever perceived
except in relation to a background.

Ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels, None other holds you that ye live and die And whir upon the wheel, and hug and kiss its spokes of agony, Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness. Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes metanoia, the mind with itself and so free from itself. Free from clutching at themselves the hands can handle; free from looking after themselves the eyes can see; free from trying to understand itself thought can think. In such feeling, seeing, and thinking life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished.

We fall in love with people and possessions only to be tortured by anxiety for them.